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Cadre Or Cult?

Gino Perente, NATLFED & the Provisional Party

The Investigation

After discussing NATLFED over the phone with Public Eye editor Chip Berlet,
he asked me if I would be willing to write an article for publication.
Upon agreeing to do so, I launched an investigation into NATLFED, its claims,
and its leader, Gino Perente.

At first, my research centered around their tales of historic "genesis" and
claimed international ties. Not really knowing about, or feeling secure
with, the cult issue, I wanted to pin down some purely "political" issues.

If one stands back and looks at their whole "genesis" story, it does
begin to make sense from one angle. If you wanted to make something up
which would be almost impossible to disprove totally (groups such as
Progressive Labor Movement, BARU, and Venceremos have since disbanded
and former members are somewhat reluctant to discuss past activities),
would impress new recruits with a picture of a wise, and an experienced
leadership and, perhaps most importantly, would instill fear into new
recruits of ever crossing or leaving the organization, then the NATLFED/Provisional
Party's tale is perfect--except research proves it to be a fabrication.

As one ex-member who helped to found CHA in Sacramento in 1973 remarked
to me, "I heard people claim that they were in Venceremos when I knew
they weren't. I don't doubt they would lie if they thought they could
use it to their advantage."

In researching their claims, I talked with several people who went to
Cuba in the early 60's with the Progressive Labor tour at the same time
as Phillip Abbott Luce. None knew of any such political tendency or OSPAAL
signatures, as claimed by the Provisional Party.

I spoke with an ex-BARU and Venceremos members who felt that the Provisional
Party's genesis tale was unfounded in fact. One of these people was H.
Bruce Franklin, former Central Committee member of Venceremos Organization.
Franklin explained to me that he doesn't claim to know everyone who was
or wasn't in Venceremos, nor does he usually like to talk about other
people's involvement in that organization. But, Franklin did know the
Gino Perente who ran the Little Red Bookstore in San Francisco in 1971.
Franklin emphatically denied to me that Gino was ever a member, or involved
with, Venceremos Organization. I believe him.

Then I contacted George Vickers, the author of The Nation article which
gave credence to NATLFED Provisional Party's claim of having descended
from Venceremos. It seems that Vickers made an honest mistake and merely
took on faith what Gino Perente told him. He had no other source of information.
Vickers now disbelieves the tale of the Provisional Party springing from
Venceremos.

Claimed International Ties

As part of the introduction to the Provisional Party, Nicaragua's revolutionary
history was twisted around to parallel the present efforts and projected
organizing drives of the Provisional Party. After researching Nicaragua's
road to revolution it became patently obvious that the Provisional Party's
rendition of history was a fairy tale. The prestige of the recent Nicaraguan
revolution was used to impress potential recruits and lead them into the
Provisional Party.

I also had come to learn that the two-hour "first person rap" I had
heard detailing the Provisional Party's ties to the Nicaraguan revolution
had first been prepared and taped by someone else, then later memorized
by various NATLFED cadre, including Dr. Shirnbaum. A few months after
joining the Provisional Party I witnessed another NATLFED cadre, this
one having never been to Nicaragua, giving the same canned rap to several
other targeted recruits, It was all a cheap, yet sophisticated trick.

As for the claims of a headquarters in Cuba, the claim that The Provisional
Party is given special status through the OSPAAL accords, and all the
other claims regarding a so-called "special relationship with the government
and Party in Cuba--they are all false. When the Public Eye contacted
the Cuban government regarding this investigation, the proper agency
for coordinating international friendship and support work (ICAP-not
OSPAAL) supplied an official document outlining their policies which
include the stated decision not to recognize any political formation
or group in the United States as having a "special" or superior status.
. . .

Leaders in several groups who regularly send support and friendship
delegations to Cuba called the Provisional Party's claims not only false
but also dangerous to Cuban-American Friendship work.

Deception as Practice

One former NATLFED organizer admits the organizing and distribution of
benefits was not primarily aimed at those people who needed assistance,
but was aimed at providing as context from which discipline and commitment
would be instilled in the cadre. He insists this was a conscious organization-building
policy and justifies those occasions when cadre used donations for their
own food, travel and lodging needs.

The theory seems to be that since a successful Marxist revolution will
in the long run greatly benefit the working class and disadvantaged,
it's OK to rip off a few poor people and workers along the way in order
to build the "true" revolutionary party. In short: The ends justify the
means--any means.

Most Marxists and Leninists interviewed for this article found such
rationalizations obnoxious and a distortion of the writings of Marx and
Lenin. Several pointed out that this type of distortion was popularized
by anti-communist and right-wing groups who pull quotes out of context
and ignore the large number of statements which contradict this inference
in the voluminous writings of Marx and Lenin.

As far as I'm concerned, calling NATLFED a Marxist organization is like
calling the "Moonies" a Christian organization. Just because they claim
to be Marxists and revolutionaries doesn't make it so.

Are other distortions and deceptions commonplace within NATLFED? This
is how one former Volunteer with NATLFED's Oakland branch phrased it:

At first sight the work here seems ideal--Low income people
have an organization which is working in their interest. . . . You
read about this positive impression in my previous reports. After three
months of experience with this project [however, I must report that]
reality is very different.

Members are told that this is their organization. To the
contrary, most members [outside New York] do not even know about the
National Labor Federation. The structure is ambiguously organized from
top to bottom. Members are at the [bottom] of the hierarchy. . . .
No decisions are made collectively, members do not have any power of
decision. . . . It is a lie if they are told that they themselves are
deciding about the organization. . . . I have been told that volunteers
are not supposed to be thinking about what they are doing.

Volunteers and members are not taken seriously, but [are being] used.
They are being lied to if it is useful to the organization. I have experienced
[these lies] often. . . .

Financial matters are totally obscure. Some money goes to the top, but
almost nobody knows where to--particularly not the members. . . .

As soon as a volunteer criticizes anything he will be interviewed by
a trained co-worker . . . [it appears to be] just like an interrogation.
Systematically, he will be driven into defense. Nobody will listen to the
problem, he is just a 'stupid' volunteer. I have never [known] criticism
[to be] really listened to.

Contacts to the outside are [severely limited], I do not know anything
but work. You may ask why I do not face my conflicts here--the militarist
structure and the way in which conflicts are dealt with are incompatible
with [raising criticisms internally]. It is assumed that anyone who does
not like [the way things are] leaves. All who are of different opinions
are stupid [and] ridiculous. . . . One who does not cooperate is a murderer
because he allows [poor people to] continue to starve. [I am told that]
the only way for real change is [through] this organization.

I do not want to cause any panic, but this organization is dangerous,
at least incalculable.

The above excerpt not only discusses the conscious deception that is integral
to the NATLFED organizing style, but makes several references concerning
enforced allegiance techniques which some critics charge make NATLFED a
cult group.

Is NATLFED a Cult?

Now that I look back at my experience in NATLFED, it sure seems to fit
all the criteria for being a dangerous cult:

•a schedule designed to produce chronic exhaustion, • long
droning lectures while followers are already exhausted, • wild ideas
and beliefs which attain the force of psychotic delusion, • predictions
of change or doom around the corner, • the POW camp-type atmosphere, • followers
quitting their jobs and severing outside personal and economic ties, • the
historic sense of mission, • the operating under tight discipline and
secrecy, • the extolment of qualities of ruthlessness and fanatical determination, • a "Triumph
of Will" approach, eventually pushing cult members to adopt a "beyond
good and evil" mentality, • the kneejerk calling of any critics "government
agents."

This is Gino Perente's National Labor Federation.

Being a political cult, the Provisional Party distorts Marxist classics
much the same way the Moonies distort Biblical passages. Religious cults
prey upon the guilt feelings of recruits who are systematically made to
be ashamed of not living up to Christian or other religious ideals. In
the Provisional Party, recruits who sincerely want to be involved in social
change are psychologically manipulated into believing that they would be
traitors to the "Cause" if they rejected the discipline of the only "true" revolutionary
party in America.

Some former recruits describe NATLFED as both militaristic and cult-like ("like
the Moonies," said one), an organization that works recruits up to 18 hours
a day, keeping them in a state of chronic fatigue, subjects them to droning
sessions of indoctrination, and discourages critical thinking. New arrivals
at the local units are given books by Marx, Lenin and Stalin as assigned reading.

Volunteers have no permanent base but are moved from place to place, sleeping
in a different location each night. Two volunteers are rarely left alone together,
and are told only as much as they need to know to carry out an assignment.
One former volunteer recalled: "A lot of the time you wanted to go up to somebody
and ask them, 'What are we doing?' but there was no one to go up to.

Another former member described being shuttled from house to house, sometimes
sleeping on the floor of the local NATLFED office, or even a garage. Food was
plentiful when visitors and potential recruits were around, but other times
cadre would go whole days without food depending on the success of local solicitations
and organizing drives. Ideological discussion was not available since the cadre
were simply lectured to and were ordered to work from pre-written instructions
given political questions and situations. Copies of some of these instruction
sheets obtained by the Public Eye show attempts to control behavior in virtually
any situation cadre would encounter.

Who's In Charge Here?

The innermost onion core behind the Provisional Party is controlled by Gino Perente
and a handful of his very trusted followers. Several of these followers joined
with Perente as adolescents over ten years ago, and have subsequently spent their
entire adult lives with him and his cause. Headquarters for the Provisional Party
is a Brooklyn brownstone house referred to as "the Cave." Maps are on the wall,
desks are crowded with members busily filing and doing correspondence and research,
walkie-talkies are used for
communication between the floors of the "Cave." A former member of NATLFED on
the East Coast: "You asked me why I left the organization. The reason was Gino.
Before you ever met him there is a big buildup that you're going to meet 'The
Old,' as they refer to him. You're taken to a room where he sits alone with you
and reads from a book." She assumed that she was expected to be in awe of Gino.
She was not sufficiently impressed to remain in the organization. Many members
are.

As for what Gino gets out of all this--another former member who knew Gino
well remarked, "Look, he gets a following, he's comfortable, and the culture
and intrigue are exciting to him." Yet Gino Perente is a far more complex person
than that description implies.

Perente as Doeden

Gerald William Doeden was born in 1937, reportedly in Twin Falls, Idaho. Gerald's
father was an old Wobblie (member of the activist International Workers of the
World, IWW) who died when Gerald was a young boy.

By 1957, Gerald and his mother, Irene, moved to Marysville, California--a
Northern California agricultural town situated near the juncture of the Feather
and Yuba Rivers.

This author interviewed over a dozen Marysville residents who remember Doeden
well, and confirm each other's accounts. One interviewee asked, "Is he still
calling himself Gino Perente?" He is remembered as somewhat of a town character.
From all these interviews, one common picture emerges of Doeden--that of an
extremely brilliant, well-read con artist with a reputation among friends for
heavy drinking and a difficulty handling recreational drug use. He is said
to have lived by a cynical twist of the Biblical saying, "A stranger came along
and I 'took him' (in)."

When Gerald Doeden was offered a scholarship to Yuba College, he refused it,
telling his friends, "If I can't steal it, then I don't want it."

Several of Doeden's old friends related a tale of how when they all once went
out drinking together with Doeden, he actually paid for drinks with a check
he'd signed, "Jesus H. Christ." Doeden was never prosecuted, apparently because
the merchant did not wish to appear in court and publicly admit he'd actually
accepted such a check.

Hearing this story reminded me of a taped lecture by Perente that I had heard
while a member of NATLFED, when Perente exclaimed, "Joe Hill was guilty as
hell. After he died, every socialist cocksucker wrote a book about him. What
about the guy who helped him rob the market? That's our hero--he robbed a capitalist
and got away with it." Perente seems to consider such activities to be salutary
and romantic.

Doeden's physical impairment is a result of his tendency to drive like a maniac,
according to several old friends. Once he was involved in a serious car accident
and fractured his leg in several places as well as sustaining other major injuries
to his legs. The doctors wanted to amputate, but Doeden refused and had his
leg in a cast for several years, developing osteomyelitis.

"He refused to wear crutches. I remember him always hopping around with that
bad leg," said Milt Carland of the Marysville Appeal Democrat. Doeden carries
that limp to this day and some reports say his leg continues to deteriorate.

One woman who was very close to Doeden in the late sixties described him as
an "extraordinarily sensitive, sad, crippled genius, with an enormous amount
of anger."

Once, while out drinking coffee at an all-night Marysville restaurant, a fellow
customer called Doeden "uncouth."

"What do you mean, uncouth?" replied Doeden, who then proceeded to recite,
from memory, entire sections from Shakespeare's play As You Like It.

Doeden worked in Marysville as a disc jockey and newscaster for local radio
station KAGR, as well as doing some freelance advertising sales for the station.
He also moonlighted as a local Shakespearean actor. Toward the late sixties,
Doeden sought help for his drinking and drug problems. Friends say he went
first to Alcoholics Anonymous and later to Synanon.

I raise this issue not to smear Doeden by mentioning his personal problems,
which he apparently successfully overcame, but because there are some troubling
and important similarities between the style and practice of Perente's Provisional
Party cult and the picture of Synanon portrayed in David Gerstel's account
of his experience in Synanon: Paradise, Inc.

Paradise, Inc. -- Paradise Lost

In Gerstel's account, Synanon leader Charles Dederich is referred to as "The
Old Man" by Synanon followers. In the Provisional Party, Gino is referred to
as "The Old." In both Synanon and the Provisional Party, members are exhorted
to "walk the walk, not just talk the talk."

Doeden's exact activities from 1969 to early 1970 are still a mystery. But,
by late 1970, Gerald Doeden, recently rehabilitated Shakespeare enthusiast,
with the blood of his Wobblie father coursing through his veins, apparently
discovered his political self when he created LARGO. Amidst the sub-culture
and intrigue of militant politics, Doeden found he could gather a following,
thereby encapsulating himself from reality. He got the first real taste of
the potential power of his charismatic leadership.

So, by 1971, Doeden had opened the Little Red Bookstore in San Francisco.
Going by the name Gino Savo, he proceeded to organize local activists throughout
Northern California into his LARGO group. They proceeded with plans of launching
military war against the government beginning March 15, 1970.

The plans collapsed. Gerry Doeden faded away.

In 1972, Doeden turns up on Long Island to organize the Long Island Association,
now the Eastern Farmworkers' Association (EFWA).

According to two ex-NATLFED members I talked with, Perente started the EFWA
after being fired by the United Farm Workers from his job as co-coordinator
of the UFW New York boycott office. The United Farm Workers have denied to
me that Perente (or Doeden) was ever on the staff of the UFW. There is agreement
that there never have been any formal working ties between the UFW and any
part of NATLFED.

Whatever the technical truth may be about Perente's claimed relationship in
the past to the UFW, several things of interest do stand out regarding Synanon
and UFW. Synanon did have a relationship with UFW. Charles Dederich and Cesar
Chavez apparently were personal friends. For awhile, Chavez incorporated a
Synanon group activity called "The Game" into the UFW's internal structure.
It is perhaps in this milieu of relationships that Doeden further consolidated
his development and style.

Tactics used by NATLFED, such as housemeetings and canvassing, as well as
the name "Eastern Farm Workers" and other organizational paraphernalia, certainly
point to the possibility that Perente was exposed enough to the UFW in order
to copy and later project some of its appealing organizational style. Unlike
the UFW, however, Perente's group seldom achieves anything of lasting significance
for the membership base they maintain in their "mass based association." Those
people only serve as a fly-paper used to attract new cult members. Any long-term
successful struggle for real gains would focus attention on NATLFED's activities,
and public scrutiny is not something Perente values.

While Perente's exposure to the UFW may have provided him with an appealing
model, it seems that his dealings with other groups in addition to Synanon
have provided him with models of more concrete internal cult-like structures.
I am now speaking of Fred Newman's International Worker's Party (IWP) and Lyndon
LaRouche's National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC), both based in New York
City.

Newman is now best known for his work with the New Alliance Party and the
New York Institute for Social Therapy, both labeled cultic by some critics.
LaRouche is currently once again seeking the Presidency of the United States,
this time as the Democratic Party nominee, but using the organization front:
The National Democratic Policy Committee.

NATLFED's preposterous claim of having placed one of their members on the
Teamster's Union Executive Council does actually parallel a real achievement
of LaRouche's NCLC who did see one of their close Teamster allies reach that
office. This Teamster/NCLC relationship was detailed in Dennis King's December
1981 article in High Times magazine: "Hippocrites -- Anti-Drug Cult Linked
to Mob Cronies."

According to King, NATLFED's relationship with LaRouche was shorted-lived. "Much
more significant was NATLFED's relationship with the Newmanites [IWP]. That
relationship went on at least through 1977, and still to this day there is
some communication between them. In 1976 fusion talks were held between NATLFED
and IWP."

Says King, "Although Gino worked with Fred Newman, he had a certain contempt
for him--referring to him as 'Fat Freddy' and regarding Newman's group as not
altogether reliable." [Ed. Note: Fat Freddy is a disheveled underground comic
character].

Specific similarities can still be seen between the style of NATLFED and the
IWP, which now uses the name New Alliance Party; the use of bucket drives to
solicit funds and pitch for volunteers; the vast amount of mindless paperwork
that followers must devote themselves to; and, according to King, "the surfacing
of selected cult members to participate in the normal life of the community
while keeping their real agenda hidden."

For both the old IWP and NATLFED, says King, the use of what they call "strata
organizing" exists "merely to give a sense of mission to the cult, feed the
vanity of the cult leaders, and provide a cover for various fund-raising and
recruitment rip-offs."

[Ed. Note: [T]he Public Eye no longer feels it is accurate to call Newman's
political network a cult. We do feel that at one point in its development
it was fair to characterize the group as a cult, and we still have strong
criticisms of the group's organizing style and the relationship between
Newman's Therapy Institute and his political organizing.]

While the possibility of an ongoing relationship between NATLFED and NCLC
has long been a matter of speculation and concern, this relationship seems
doubtful. Unfortunately, most concern about NATLFED has revolved around this
point to the exclusion of other concerns. No matter their past or resent ties
to LaRouche-- Perente's group is a potentially dangerous cult in its own right.
There are some critics of NATLFED who strongly feel that the whole organization
is part of an FBI COINTELPRO-type operation designed to gather information
on, and disrupt, the American left. While not dismissing this as a possibility,
I have found no direct evidence to support this view. But NATLFED is so far
over the edge that it really may not matter whether or not they are part of
any pre-planned plot or conspiracy in terms of the potential for disaster.
They are dangerous to themselves, the progressive movement and the real interests
of poor and working people.

Perente appears to be extending his political influence. Using the name Eugenio
Vincente Perente-Ramos, Perente is listed as the business agent of the Texas
Farm Workers Union, and his cadre are involved in producing literature for
that group. Already this relationship has further isolated the Texas Farm Workers
from broad- based support from labor unions and the progressive community.

The Texas Farm Worker connection provides NATLFED with yet another cover to
rope in more recruits and connections. NATLFED is currently organizing TFWU
Support Committees on the East Coast.

Further, it would be callous to disregard the plight of those sincere individuals
who have been snared by NATLFED and the Provisional Party through the use of
psychologically-manipulative techniques--and more potential cult members continue
to be fed into Perente's operation through the reputation it gained while publishing
the Commission on Voluntary Service and Action's guide Invest Yourself, which
NATLFED continues to publish unilaterally. . . . Another group which appears
to be a source of volunteers is the legitimate Hispanic law student organization,
La Raza Legal Alliance.

Perente also seems to be moving in the direction of penetrating organized
labor in the role of a consultant and through the provision of legal and support
services.

Where Perente is heading is difficult to predict. It is ludicrous to expect
that the timetable for "revolution" in early 1984 will be adhered to; but Perente
shows no signs of fading away; rather he shows signs of extending his influence.

As one sociologist whom Gino tried to recruit said, "I think that Gino sees
himself as some kind of modern-day American version of Lenin, who plans to
rise to power by playing off one group against the other--a kind of double,
double agent."

Cleaning Our Own Dirty Linen

So, how can we, the progressives of this country, allow this group to operate
in our midst unchallenged? Part of the reason Perente's group may appear to be
part of the left political spectrum is that we allow them to do so. Any group
may label itself a communist party, or have a progressive exterior front, and
seek to operate clandestinely. But, this group is not really hiding from the
government, but rather from the public in general and the
left in particular.

Look at the history of any past revolutionary movement forced to struggle
through a clandestine organization. What was clandestine has usually been only
the identity of local members, the location of leadership, and very specific
strategy or tactics. But the long-term goals of the organizations, and the
group's ideology are usually public knowledge, so that there can be discussion,
feedback, and trust from all sectors of the people seeking the revolutionary
transformation of society. And real revolutionaries are often willing to risk
paying a heavy price for making such information available to the working class
because they know it is an indispensable part of the process.

Nor should we hesitate to challenge NATLFED on the basis of its claims to
be a labor organization. NATLFED itself has denied being a labor organization
to the Department of Labor and there is no evidence to suggest that NATLFED
represents workers before management anywhere in the United States. The only
labor NATLFED is truly organizing is the hard labor of its exploited cadre
and volunteers.

The organizations described in the church-related volunteer guide Invest Yourself
are neither labor organizations nor "mutual benefit" associations. They are
in fact local service organizations where free legal and medical help is traded
for the recipients' signed pledge of "membership" in the organization. These
one-time benefits recipients are the source of NATLFED's claims of vast numbers
of members and supporters.

Although it is admittedly somewhat embarrassing, it has not been really too
hard for me to face up to the fact that I was stupid enough to be conned by
this cult group. I've been conned before and will probably be conned again.
There are far more intelligent people than I, with fine motivations, still
trapped in the NATLFED cult.

What profoundly disturbs me is this group has been out canvassing in poor
neighborhoods across the country and drawing in young (and some old) people
with idealistic, progressive ideas for over ten years now. And, for the most
part, they have gone unchallenged, unexposed, and in some cased, even aided
by the progressive movement.